Wrote this a long time ago. Too short for an article:
Perverted - Hentai in Japanese. But the word pervert means
deviation from normal or accepted. So, how can all guys be
perverts?

Did you ever notice that the sex scene in the movie is generally
at about the same realative place as the guitar solo in a song?

Smoke
Updated: 2009-06-10

I think that the ability to add smoke or smoke like substances would be great for
the realism. I thought of two areas where it would work. First these ships are
smoke pots. They work by burning coal or oil to generate steam to run piston
steam engines or turbines. Adding smoke or steam hast from the funnels would
be great.

The other idea is to add steam or smoke from below decks/super structure on remote control. Then
as the ship takes damage, you could start a "fire". This is probably a bad
combat idea as it would attract attention to a possibly sinking ship and others
would gang up on it. A simple control could be linked to the bilge pumps. A more
elaborate control would be a remote control switch or pot. On a computer controlled
ship the "smoke" could be automatic based on water sensors, that also control
the bilge pump/pumps.

For smoke some sort of oil burning unit could be used, like they use on Lionel
trains. I am not sure how you could work it with steam. Steam has the advantage
of dissipating quickly and leaving no residue on the water or any ships. I don't
really know how you could generate steam and if the power requirements could be
met.

The question would be the pyrotechnics rule. I'm pretty sure that steam should
be ok as your not actually burning anything and it has no residue, it even cleans
things. Smoke would probably be easier to do, but might not be allowed. So how
do you make a steam generator?

Guns that generate smoke when they fire would be downright awesome, but I have
no idea how you could do that. Perhaps introducing steam or smoke or dust into
the propellant. A puff of steam would do the trick but how could you get it to
feed into the lines and would it mess up the guns. Introducing water into the
lines could just do it, but I'm not sure of the science. Perhaps a substance
could be introduced to the barrel right after the bend.